There are many ways in which you can help the Tux Paint project: promoting it to your friends and neighbors, contributing artwork, submitting source code patches, and more.

Thank you for considering to help our project!

Jump to: Translating Tux Paint | Creating Artwork | Creating Classroom Curriculum | Improving Tux Paint

Translating Tux Paint

If you're interested in translating Tux Paint into another language, it's easy! You should probably join the "tuxpaint-i18n" mailing list, in case you have questions. Most other volunteers working on translating Tux Paint are subscribed to it.

You can see the current state of existing translations, and also download the ".po" gettext catalogs on the "Help Us Translate" page.

To translate the core Tux Paint application, Tux Paint's documentation, the Tux Paint Config. tool, the standard Tux Paint Stamps collection, or the website:

1. For best results, download the latest pre-release version of Tux Paint, Tux Paint Config., or the Stamps collection, or the code to the Tux Paint website, from the Git repository (preferred).
   Alternatively, you can get download the latest POT files from Git or via FTP. See the "Help Us Translate" page for details.
2. Install poEdit, a 'gettext catalog' (".po" file) editor for Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix.
3. Load "tuxpaint.pot", "tuxpaint-stamps.pot" or "tuxpaint-config.pot" into poEdit and translate the various strings.
   Note: If you are translating the Stamps description strings, but have not yet downloaded the Stamps collection, you can preview the imagery online in the Stamps Browser.
4. If you have received developer's access to the source code repository, or branched the repository, simply add the files to the "po/" directory, and commit your changes (and submit a pull request)! Otherwise, simply e-mail the gettext catalog file to us!

Creating Artwork

One of the most popular features of Tux Paint is the "Stamps" tool, and the collection of 'rubber-stamp' images which can be placed into a drawing. There are also 'Starter' and 'Template' images that can used to start new drawings.

If you'd like to contribute your own artwork or photography, we'd love to accept it! Since Tux Paint is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), we would ask that you contribute your art under the same license (or one that is compatible), so that as many people as possible may benefit from Tux Paint.

Obviously, you must have the rights whatever artwork or photography you contribute. (In other words, you cannot take someone else's photos or clipart and send it to us for inclusion in the project. They must license it in a way that gives us that permission.)

Stamp artwork must be in the PNG or SVG graphics file format. For PNGs, use of an alpha channel is necessary to remove borders around non-rectangular shapes.

Additional data may be contributed with a stamp image: stamps may include localized descriptive text and sounds, sound effects, and various option settings (like the ability to tint the image before stamping it). Sounds should be in Ogg Vorbis (preferred), WAV or MP3 format.

For more information, see Tux Paint's documentation. We also encourage artwork contributors to subscribe to the "tuxpaint-stamps" mailing-list.

Preparing Existing Artwork

Clipart and photographic artwork from numerous sources (including Flickr, the Wikimedia Commons, and others) can be used in Tux Paint, so long as they have a compatible license (Public Domain, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA), etc.). Some of this artwork requires preparation (removal of backgrounds, resizing, and creating appropriate metadata). So even if you are artistically challenged and not good at photography, you can still help contribute.

Creating Classroom Curriculum

While some classroom content is already available (see the "Lesson Plans & Projects Using Tux Paint" section of the Links page), we would love to be able to dedicate an entire section to this website for various classroom activities that teachers can use freely.

If you're interested in helping, contact Bill Kendrick at: bill@newbreedsoftware.com or post a message to the "tuxpaint-users" mailing-list.

Improving Tux Paint

If you're interested in improving the Tux Paint software, please subscribe to the "tuxpaint-dev" mailing-list. This is where developers discuss potential changes, ask questions, and solve problems.

If you're not sure where to start, see the list of bug reports and feature requests. It contains a list of ideas, suggestions, and bugs which we would like to see worked on (or at least considered).

We also have a Tux Paint team at Trello, containing boards with some to-do and wish-list items.

All of Tux Paint's contributors can be seen in the "AUTHORS.txt" document, as well as on the "Developers" page of the Tux Paint website.

ChromeOS (Chromebook) Port of Tux Paint

A major platform used by children and in educational environments is Google's ChromeOS (itself based on the open source ChromiumOS project), which powers a variety of Chromebook devices.

Currently, Tux Paint has not been ported to ChromeOS. However, the Android version of Tux Paint has been found to work on Chromebooks that support running Android apps. We created a separate Tux Paint for Chromebook download page to share this info.

However, a native port of Tux Paint to ChromeOS would be preferred, for performance, stability, and to avoid the quirks of running mobile-oriented (phone & tablet) apps on a laptop-like device (e.g., the need to reenable the cursor, otherwise Tux Paint is unusable with just a mouse!)

If you have familiarity with creating and maintaining ChromeOS applications, especially those based on Simple DirectMedia Layer library (libSDL) and other open source libraries that Tux Paint utilizes (see Tux Paint's Requirements), please contact us!